Battles Without Honor and Humanity

In Hiroshima just after the war, gangs form among the rubble and the black market. A demobilised soldier named Shozo Hirono enters that world as soon as he returns, and over the years alliances are made and broken while oaths of brotherhood mean nothing. Kinji Fukasaku deliberately demolishes the honour-and-loyalty version of yakuza cinema that preceded him; the title says as much. The camera is handheld throughout, the frames tilt, scenes cut off abruptly, and the names of the dead appear on screen as text, as though this were documentary. The source is the prison writings of a real yakuza. Bunta Sugawara leads. It is the first of five films and it turned the genre. Who it is for: viewers who like yakuza cinema and hard seventies Japanese film. Who it is not for: anyone hoping to follow the characters, since this moves through dozens of names and constantly shifting alliances.